Pretend It Never Happened
by Wizard of night
Summary: From the time they were little children, James Sirius Potter and his older cousin Molly Weasley never got along well. But how can one teenage boy take the game of revenge too far? And what of the consequences?


When she was eight and I was six, my cousin Molly forgot her broomstick on the early spring day we were all at the Burrow to play Quidditch. She glanced around the group of younger cousins before locking her cold grey eyes on my little brother and storming over to him, demanding, "Give me yours, then!"

Albus just stared up at her, wide-eyed, clutching his broom which had been brand new that Christmas and he'd hardly gotten a chance to fly.

She became frustrated and yanked it out of his hands, sending him stumbling backwards into a half frozen muddy pond in the process.

Now, it's not like I had never pushed my brother before, but at the grand age of six, I understood that Albus was mine to pick on and no one else's, least of all someone twice his size. So I stomped over to her and shouted, "Give it back, Fatso!"

A word about my cousin's figure. I wouldn't call her fat- alright, yes I would. She's got tubby cheeks and a round stomach and the biggest set of thighs I've ever seen. When she walks, she struts- and her behind wobbles. She takes after her Mum.

She's a bit sensitive about it too, so naturally, the next thing she did was punch me in the mouth. She hits hard, for a girl. If you were interested, that's how I lost my first tooth.

I recovered quickly and shoved her as hard as I could right in her stupid fat stomach, and she reeled backwards.

When I saw who grabbed her by the arm to keep her from landing in the same pond my brother was pulling himself out of sopping wet with chattering teeth, my heart sank. Victiore Weasley was my oldest cousin apart from Teddy who was still at school, and she was a notorious goody-goody. At eleven years old, she would be starting Hogwarts in the fall, and already had her heart set on becoming prefect. She and Molly together with Dominique also made up the trio of feared "big girls", who always worked together and none of us wanted to cross.

But instead of scolding me, Victiore gave Molly a moment to straighten up before giving her a good smack across the face.

When Molly looked horribly stung at this, Victiore- who has always had a fiendish temper- snapped, "You do not pick on ze little ones!"

Yes, she has a bit of a French accent, but only when she's really angry. Probably because that's the only time her mother reverts to French. I've heard it with my own ears- it's a bit frightening.

Victiore's disgust was the cue for the rest of us. Almost immediately, Louis and Fred and Rose and her sister, Lucy, and even Dominique were shouting insults at her, and little Rose made a great show of going over to Albus and helping him straighten up. She also gave him her jacket to put on over his sopping jumper.

Then as a parade, we all marched inside where the parents were sitting around drinking tea and watching the littlest kids build with blocks on the carpet.

I'm not sure how much sense they made of the indignant babble of voices, each clamoring to be heard until I had enough and stormed over to my mother, dragging Albus by the arm and dripping blood from my mouth, shouting, "Mummy, Molly _shoved_ Al and _stole_ his broomstick and she's a _Big_! _Fat_! _Meanie_!"

Needless to say, when my mother failed to get excited, I stomped my foot and resorted to throwing a tantrum.

Molly was never punished. I, on the other hand, had my own broomstick taken away for the remainder of the afternoon for calling names and making a fuss.

I hated Molly after that. Every Sunday tea following that, right up until she started Hogwarts, I did my best to torment her. I chased after her, calling her Fat and Ugly and Pig. I wore my shoes to tea and always positioned myself so I could kick her under the table for the duration of the meal. I pulled her hair and stomped on her toes, and one memorable lunch, I took Grandma Molly's shears and cut off a chunk of her hair.

Soon, it was no longer for revenge, but more of a game. How soon could I make her cry? Could I get bonus points if I drew blood?

For a while, the others played too. It was so much fun when it was all chased after her, and Louis and Dominique helped me tackle her to the ground and shove her face into the snow.

It wasn't as if she never retaliated. It was clear that what we were doing hadn't made her see the error of her ways, because she was still as much of a bully as ever.

If I tried to pull her skirt down under the table, she tipped over her tea so it spilled into my lap. If she spellotaped a "Loser" sign to the back of my jumper on her way past me, I hung out the second story window over the back door until she went out to play, then spat in her hair. But I was always victorious. She could call me Brat and Ape and Smelly all she liked, because everyone else was always on my side to run after her calling her Porky and Lard and Bully.

Once in a while, it occurred to me that I was being almost as mean as she was, but that didn't matter, because we all knew it was just a game.

It was amazing how oblivious the adults always were. If they ever saw anything we were doing to each other, they just laughed it off. I even heard Uncle Ron say once, "Kids will be kids, won't they?"

And Grandma Molly; "Merlin, yes! Do you remember when Charlie glued Bill's wand to the cat?"

I have to admit that by the time we were both unleashed in Hogwarts, despite her being two years ahead of me, we turned the castle into a war zone.

And by then, magic was allowed.

I hit her with curses in the corridors. I snuck into her bag one day when she left it in the common room and switched around all her potions ingredients. She was in the hospital wing for three days after her supposed befuddling draught exploded all over her. I grabbed her diary and left it in the library. I leaked rumors about her. Some of them were true, like the fact that she totally had a crush on Stanley DePaul in the year above her, or how her Mum used Muggle Barbie stickers to get her Potty-trained.

Once in second year, after I walked into the common room to find her with her wand drawn on a first year, I stole her bra and hung it from the spire atop Gryffindor tower.

Later, I realized she'd just been showing him a spell, but that hardly seemed to matter.

Then, in History of Magic, of all places, I heard what her father had done during the war.

When my Dad had been working his butt off to convince the entire world that Lord Voldemort was back, and the ministry had been calling him a liar and even trying to kill him, Uncle Percy had been helping _them_?

It made sense, really. Like father, like daughter.

I left that class fuming, found Molly outside her third period Herbology class and punched her in the mouth so hard she fell backwards, blood streaming down her face.

Sound familiar? Yeah, she did the same thing to me, only back then she was a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier.

She screamed, but I jumped on top of her, punching the hell out of her.

"What- the – fuck- Potter?" She gasped, struggling feebly underneath me as I literally tried to slam her head into the ground beneath us, her short red hair all over her face, sticking in the blood.

"Your family is a bunch of fucking traitors!" I roared, trying to find somewhere else to punch, some other way to make her _hurt_. I knew I had limited time- sooner or later some little group of friends of hers was going to come and yank me off her and give me hell.

Then I realized; the rest of the class was _clapping_. Cheering, even.

Fuel to the fire, eh? "You_ fat _bitch!" I shouted. "How much freaking garbage do you shove in your face anyway? What do you way now, twenty stone?"

And with that I landed my knee square in the small of her stomach and she jerked upwards, puking up some bile-y liquid all over.

And the rest of the class of fifth years behind me was laughing, and me, this third year, in the middle, raging.

I didn't even register when the lawn around me became silent as a tomb, so absorbed was I in kicking her back as hard as I could with the toe of my shoe until Professor Longbottom's face was inches from mine, shoving me away from her and helping Molly off the ground.

"My office," he snapped at me, "Now!"

Twenty minutes later, I was pretty sure he agreed with me. Percy Weasley and his brat were complete turncoats.

After all, he only gave me a week of detentions, and didn't even write home. I got worse than that for skiving Potions last month.

That was all the encouragement I needed. From that point on, I was merciless. I don't even remember when she stopped fighting back.

The picture I took of her in her underwear over Christmas that year made its way around the castle fast. I'm not really sure why- all I did was leave copies in all the student bathrooms.

I may have altered it slightly- but not too much. All I knew was that she totally deserved all the jeering, the insults thrown her way.

I was actually sort of proud. The seventh years came up with way better invectives than I could have on my own. I'm not actually entirely sure what they all meant, just that if I said them at home, I'd get my mouth washed out with soap.

When Louis told me she was anorexic, I almost died laughing. I'd never heard anything more pathetic in my life. Like she actually thought she could make a difference?

I happened to know that last April she'd weighed eleven stone. That was why I was so surprised that summer when I came in to use the loo after her and found the bathroom scale at the Burrow left at 137 pounds- about nine stone.

This was so pathetic. So freaking stupid. Did she actually think being thinner would make anyone like her any better?

Obviously, three weeks later, when I came into the Burrow to find her throwing up over the toilet in the bathroom, I had to josh her. "Hey, Pig. I thought you were anorexic, not bulimic. Decide to change sides?" I was in the middle of laughing my head off when I saw the bottle of dittany on the counter. The empty bottle of dittany.

Wasn't that how Sonja Miller offed herself last year? Ingested a bottle of dittany?

Was that what she was throwing up?

Something in my chest lurched, a sort of panic, but all I could do was snigger and point.

"Did you seriously just drink that? You fucking _loser_! Who do you think would miss you, anyway?"

Then I ran out of the house, my heart pounding in my chest, battering my ribs, sending blood pulsing through my head until I threw up at the edge of that same pond she'd pushed Albus into all those years ago.

Merlin's beard, I hated myself.

But I hated her more. I hated her more than I could stand.

She didn't freaking deserve to be alive.

So I was actually kind of disappointed when reappeared at the house some twenty minutes later after I'd collected myself, to find her still flourishing, pale and sitting under the coat rack with her nose buried in a book.

I kicked it out of her hands as I went past. Just for fun.

Of course, after that, I wasn't about to stop teasing her. She might actually reckon I felt _sorry_ for her.

So once we were back at Hogwarts, I cut holes in the bottom of her book bag. And her inkwell. And her cauldron. I left toads and spiders in her bed, and, when I couldn't hear the shrieks from my dormitory, Ashwinder eggs. Believe it or not, no one ever found out it was me that nearly burned down Gryffindor tower. Which is amazing, because Molly used to be such a snitch.

When Dominique let slip that Louis had told her that his mate Arran Abercrombie had told him that his dorm mate Clifford's big brother Stanley DePaul was fucking Molly, I had the time of my life.

I actually snuck into his dormitory once, after lights out, and I swear I could hear it. Whimpers and cries and stuff.

Don't get me wrong, he's a lucky dude, but it's totally disgusting, too.

By the time that spread around- and I didn't even do it this time, mostly- the names they called her were so bloody awesome.

Whore and Easy and "Hey Blubber, would you do it with me?" were the nice ones.

Now, you're better off not asking what I was doing in the girl's room on November 16 at roughly four thirty in the morning. Alright, Fred bet me five galleons I was chicken.

Don't get me wrong- It's not like I've never snuck into the girl's loo before. This was special. This was Moaning Myrtle's loo, the one that holds the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. And I'd been practicing, too. Louis swore he'd found it in the library- it was like- Athoon SSyng HSieths AsHsssS- which he said translated to "Open the Chamber", but I thought was probably, "James Potter is a dickhead."

Anyway, all they wanted as proof was a fang and six squares of toilet paper, so I thought I had it pretty easy. Until I reached the door, and it swung open, and none other than Molly Weasley ran past me sobbing like a friggin banshee.

I don't even think she registered I was there.

Now, it's a lot more normal for a girl to be in the girl's bathroom than for a boy to be trying to crash the Chamber of Secrets, but like I said, this was four-thirty in the morning, so I might have detoured to the stalls to see if I could figure out what she was on about.

And it's not exactly like I've studied it, but I've seen enough pictures to know what a positive pregnancy test looks like.

And there was music in the back of my head going, like- someone's in too deep now!

But then, I don't know, it's like it wasn't really funny anymore.

Uncle Percy is going to kill her. Seriously.

And a baby? Like, an actual real live baby?

It was like, maybe I should tell someone. Only then, I'd be in trouble. For being in the girl's bathroom, and a thousand other things.

Like not stopping that bastard DePaul from having freaking sex with her.

I mean, after all, she's my cousin.

She's a right bitch, and she probably deserved it, but that one scene is kind of swimming in my mind right now.

Y'know, that one from over break.

When she tried to kill herself.

And she was all bent over the toilet, and she was throwing up that crud, and she was staring at me when I came in, like, Holy Sh- but then it was like she wanted me to help her. She freaking thought I would help her.

Maybe- it's not a game to her, anymore?

When did she stop fighting back?

Was it- ever? A game to her?

And by then I'm almost at the common room, because the freaking five Galleons don't matter so much anymore, and all of a sudden, I don't want to go in. I don't want to risk seeing her.

I don't want to have to tell her that maybe she does matter, that it's actually been sort of fun, all those years before she messed it up. I thought she was having fun too.

Do she _ever_ have fun?

So I grab my broom. And I take it down to the grounds. And I know I'll regret it in the morning because we've got some huge exam in Potions, and the last time I tried to take on of them on three hours of sleep, the potion kind of exploded and I got- like- a twenty percent, and only that high because the stuff that exploded actually did work- have the class shrank to six year old kids. They were just a bit tricky to grow back.

But on my broom I'm thinking. I'm thinking a lot of things, but mostly about Uncle Percy.

And how he kind of hit the bottle, after Aunt Audrey had her accident.

And what Dad said once, about how he saw Percy hit Molly's little sister, the one time.

And how, everything that happened during the war- he's never forgotten it.

Neither has Molly, really.

Is that why she used to try so hard, to fit in before everything started?

How did everything start, anyway? I can barely remember. Something stupid, something childish, something that should never have turned into this.

So I'm flying around on my broomstick, sounding like freaking Aristotle or some other thinker-type dude in my head, and I fly by the Whomping Willow.

And just for fun, I see how close I can get, like always.

But I get to close. And one of the branches comes flying towards me, and it bashes into the straw of my broom and sends me whirling around, out of reach.

But while I'm spinning, there's this blur of red.

And when I get my head on straight, I see it's hair.

Molly Weasley's hair.

And she's flying too.

She's spiraling.

Straight down, past me.

And I could have told her, that's dangerous.

Really, really, dangerous.

Because it's so hard to pull out of a dive like that.

Even the professionals practice for ages, and there are still accidents.

So that's why I'm flying as fast as I can towards her, to see if I can catch her if she can't pull out of the dive.

Before I realize that actually, she isn't trying to pull out of the dive.

She's tried before.

She's trying again.

She's trying to freaking kill herself.

And I've said before, I don't care.

Really, I don't.

NOT AT ALL.

But now it's not just her.

It's that baby, too.

And maybe she doesn't care.

I don't care, even.

But, I mean, it's just this baby.

I don't even like babies. They freak me out, the way they look right through you. The way they trust you, like you know what the right thing to do is.

Even though you don't, really.

Hardly ever.

But the thing with this baby- with all babies. With Molly - with me- with everyone else.

Babies don't ask to be here. Or there, or whatever.

It's not that baby's fault about anything. Not DePaul, or your father, or Molly, or ME, and what I think I've made her.

So I've got to fucking save her life.

This occurs to me with about three seconds to spare, but I'm not seeker for nothing.

I'm good at dives. I'm good at _stopping_ dives.

I can stop her.

So I do it. I fly in front of her broom, and I grab the handle in a way that would have gotten me suspended from the team, and I lurch it upward, and she goes flying off and I grab her by the neck of her shirt.

We both spiral towards the ground together, but I let her land on me.

It's not like it's her fault I stopped her. Or the baby's.

And just like that, she socks me square in the mouth.

But I don't care. I tell her, "I'm sorry."

She said, "Fuck you," and stormed off.

A week later, she ran away.

I never found out what happened to the baby.

All right, that's the worst lie I've ever told. I know. Of course I know.

With what I knew, it was pretty freaking obvious what had happened. Everyone else was just too blind to see.

Teddy's the only one of us she ever trusted. He's the only one who's never teased her.

I'm fucking jealous, actually, about how close the two of them wound up.

He was looking to adopt a baby anyway, him and Victiore.

She's never been quite as close to Victiore, but I know she told them everything.

They were looking to adopt, anyway. Ever since four months after they'd married, when the doctors at St. Mungo's had told them it would be far too dangerous for them to have kids, because they both had circulating werewolf blood.

I know, because by the time I came home for Christmas break the following year, Teddy and Victiore had a tiny, red haired baby boy, who fit in just perfectly.

And he was named after the one who, ultimately, had saved his life.

Hell knows what would have happened to little Jamsie otherwise.

* * *

Molly showed up for Christmas four years later, when I was twenty-one and she was twenty-three. She looked like she weighed about eighty pounds, her hair was cut _short_, spiked all around her head, and streaked with black.

Lucy was nineteen. She cried with joy to see her, but Molly pushed her away.

Uncle Percy ignored her completely.

No one else knew what to do. I think they tried to act like she'd never been missing, but it was like there was this huge air-bubble around her, almost invisible, but not so much that you couldn't see it there, feel it there, fucking smell it there.

That's not too far off the base, actually. She reeked of alcohol.

She barely said two words the entire evening, and I think Teddy, Victiore and I were the only ones who knew what she was there for.

I saw the look on her face, when she watched James Remus's face light up when he opened his present from his parents, watched him fly across the room into Teddy's arms, the poor Pygmy Puff crushed between them as James hugged his father as hard as he could.

Then I watched her spin around, leaving the room like it was on fire. I heard faint footsteps in the hall beyond, then the back door slammed and moments later, the pop of dissaperation.

It wasn't like there was anything I could do.

She was gone. I doubted whether I'd ever see her again.

For all anyone spoke of her, it was like she was never even there.

Sometimes, I doubt she ever was.

It's easier to pretend nothing ever happened.


End file.
